Once you see the world this way, you can't go back

One of the legends of improv theatre, Keith Johnstone, wrote that all interactions between humans include status games, and there's no such thing as neutral status. Someone is always higher relative to the other. (Just a note, don't confuse this with power over others which is a mechanical process). You may recognise such status interactions at home, like when a couple compete for who's had the least sleep with a new baby, or who's done the most chores around the house. At work, these are more obvious—who's contributed more, who's more valuable to the firm, etc.

You can gain status over someone else in one of two ways—either put them down or raise yourself up. Putting them down looks like, "yeah, but you never do as much as me around the house". Building yourself up looks like, "yeah, but I'm constantly up with the kids at night."

All status games are an attempt to get someone to act in a certain way as a response to your status. (To be clear—there may be status games that aren't attempts to move a person to action, only to position them in a certain way for action later on, but they're functionally the same. Status games also exist without any immediate action connected to them, like when friends put each other down in a banterous way. These interactions are also irrelevant to us, because we're looking at status instrumentally.)

‍

I've been thinking about how to keep your status high no matter what is happening in the interaction in front of you, and I think there are three components. I'll list them and then break them down in more detail.

1. Values
2. Ability to notice when someone is trying to move you
3. Ability to stay calm long enough to react appropriately

Values

Values are key because they tell you the directions in which you want to move, don't mind moving, and will never move. As an example—I know that, as a practicing Jew, I'll never violate the Sabbath. There's no amount of money in the world you could give me or coercion you could do to me (short of physical violence) to get me to shift this value. It's an immovable object.

Once I know where my values lie, I can then evaluate if the direction someone wants to move me in is one I'd like to go, one I'm not particular about, or one I must avoid at all costs.

Noticing

If I can't see that I'm being moved in a particular way, that we're locked in a battle for status, then I can't respond to it. Noticing means that I begin to see, in the interactions around me, how my status is being raised and lowered. It's seeing how someone might make a joke at my expense or how they might be trying to downplay my achievements or big up theirs.

I warn you—this is biting from the Edenic fruit. Once you begin to notice these interactions, you'll see them everywhere. The scales will fall from your eyes.

Staying calm

Even if I have values and I am able to notice the status games, if I can't react properly to them, my knowledge is useless. I have to be able to stay calm long enough to evaluate what's being done to me and then decide how I want to respond.

This is nervous system work. It's creating a space between stimulus and response so that you can decide what the right reaction is.

Status exists in the liminal space, but is decided internally

Status games are played between two people. But I'm teaching you a strategy that renders status games innocuous. The reason is that no one can lower your status if you don't let them. In other words, once you see the game, you can step out of the game, the ultimate high-status move.

By way of analogy—think of an arm wrestle with a young child. Perhaps a sibling or niece/nephew. Maybe your own kid. There are times when you might let the kid win. But, in contrast to other losses in games against peers, where you do experience a lowering of status (even temporarily) because you lost, there is no concomitant loss of status when you "lose" to the child. The reason is because your "status", your ability, was such that you "let" the child win. You gave the charade of playing the game, when really the game you were playing was another one entirely.

This is what I mean by staying high-status all the time. If you operate outside the normal rules of social interactions, meaning you move only when you want to move and not when others move you, your status becomes unshakeable. You're not playing the same game that other people are—it doesn't affect you in the slightest. You move when you want to move; it may be in the direction others want you to move in, it may not. But that's up to you.

Here's a challenge for the next week: take a look at your interactions with other people and see if you can't see the status mini-games being played all the time. Don't do anything but notice at this stage. I think you'll find the results enlightening.

‍